The convergence of advances in the fields of networking, wireless communications, mobile computing, and the Internet, has made it technologically feasible to provide virtually any type of information and/or services to individuals at virtually anytime and any place. It is envisioned that small, unobtrusive devices can be set up to transmit specific information regarding an object, business, or point of reference associated with that particular device. These devices serve as “information access points” (IAPs) for providing specific, localized information. A passerby, can access this information by pointing his or her personal communications device, such as a cell phone, personal digital assistant, or any type of mobile computing device, at the IAP device and download the transmitted information.
For example, a painting at a museum could have an associated IAP device that continuously broadcasts information regarding that painting. A visitor to the museum who is interested in that painting could then direct his or her portable communications device at the IAP device to receive textual, audio, and/or visual information regarding that painting. Alternatively, the IAP device could provide the visitor with a URL or some type of pointer to a web site that has the desired information. Furthermore, that person may be interested in finding where other paintings by that same artist may be found in the museum. This would require that the IAP devices have known physical locations (e.g., latitude and longitude). It would be of great benefit were most, if not all, IAP devices to have known locations. An individual could then be directed to the nearest restaurant, restroom, bus stop, hospital, newsstand, ATM machine, pay phone, etc., by virtue of the IAP devices. IAPs thus serve as an informational beacon.
Physical IAP beacons have been used for attracting attention to and providing information, such as a URL about a particular location deploying it. Physical beacons however can have inherent limitations due to their physical character. For instance, physical beacons must be manually placed, and if necessary, manually repositioned. They must also be manually programmed with their associated URL, and manually reprogrammed if the URL changes. Further, physical beacons are not dynamic or responsive to changes in their environment. For example, a physical beacon associated with an item placed on sale will not shut off if the item is out of stock. The performance of physical beacons can be sensitive to environmental constraints such as temperature, humidity, shock and vibration, and power problems (such as AC power failure or a battery running down) and they can be damaged thereby. Further still, physical beacons that require visible (e.g., line of sight) source detection such as infrared, barcode, Watermark, etc., can be blocked by other physical objects. For example, a line of sight source detection physical beacon can be accidentally blocked if a large truck parks in front of a store displaying the beacon; malicious blocking is also not inconceivable.
Virtual beacons comprise a point in three dimensional space such as a geographic location with an associated URL. Virtual beacons are typically electronically created and maintained, such as by a computing system on the Web. Virtual beacons have advantages over corresponding physical beacons. Such advantages accrue to virtual beacons because of the limitations inherent in physical beacons discussed above. The point in three-dimensional space comprising a virtual beacon is typically associated with a physical object such as a building or other structure, a point of interest, or a sign such as an advertising billboard. A device can be enabled to respond to a virtual beacon. One such device enablement is WebSign™ (by Hewlett Packard, a corporation in Palo Alto, Calif.).
A virtual beacon enabled device can be pointed at the physical object, point of interest, or sign associated with the point in three-dimensional space. When so pointed, the device can detect the virtual beacon associated therewith and its associated URL. The device can then retrieve an associated Web page, as directed by the URL. This allows a user to obtain useful information relevant to the physical object, point of interest, or sign associated with the point in three-dimensional space. To be effective, a virtual beacon enabled device will respond to a virtual beacon and retrieve its associated URL when the geographic location (e.g., latitude and longitude) of the associated physical object, point of interest, or sign falls within a search window of the device. The search window can correspond to the device being within some maximum range of the virtual beacon. The virtual beacon will then transmit to the device the latitude and longitude and/or another geographic location identity to the device, as well as the associated URL.
There exist many different ways by which to establish a beacon's location. One method entails utilizing traditional surveying techniques to fix the location of an IAP device. Unfortunately, this method is quite time consuming and expensive. As such, traditional surveying techniques are typically limited to known landmarks or to locations of significance. It would be cost prohibitive to survey in each and every one of the multitudes of IAP devices. Another method entails using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to establish the locations of IAP devices. However, GPS generally requires a direct line-of-sight to several of the orbiting satellites. Consequently, GPS cannot be used to establish the locations of indoor IAP devices. Another commonly used technique involves cellular triangulation. Unfortunately, cellular triangulation has limited accuracy (e.g., 100 meters for standard cell sizes and less than 25 meters for microcells). Furthermore, cellular triangulation is susceptible to multi-pathing problems indoors.
Whatever technique is utilized to establish a beacon's location, conventional beacons are static in their area of coverage. A static beacon however lacks the capability to change the information it provides in response to changing or variable factors, conditions, criteria, situations, occurrences and sequences of occurrences, and circumstances. Further, conventional static beacons lack directionality and thus do not change their information despite the fact that a user may be close to the location of the beacon, or even at the location, but not immediately accessible to the beacon. Such absence of directionality can be misleading in a situation where a user is at the beacon location, but the location remains inaccessible to the user. Static beacons also have static locations, such that the beacon is fixed in three-dimensional space. Thus, the beacons are unable to move, despite the fact that a user who left the beacon for another user may have changed position.